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Sunday, May 14, 2017

Simple Joy

Have you read the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?

That's sort of what my experience with the Gelatos Mixed Media kit turned out to be. Sure, the Gelatos are cool and all, and there's certainly a lot you can do with them, but the issue of smearing keeps recurring annoyingly. Here's the photographic evidence of my experiments using Gelatos with stencils, sponges, and a spatter technique after dissolving them in water.

Pretty, aren't they?

Lovely effect, pebbly and pretty!

Sadly, smeary.

This was my favorite! Done with a toothbrush.

After a full day of drying, this happened. Very little pressureneeded to smear this.

I didn't bother photographing the sponged panel. I think I proved my point.

Gelatos have a good bit of wax in them (at least, I think it's wax...some sort of substrate to hold the color together anyway), and dissolving it all in water is difficult and might take a whole lot more time and patience than I have. The waxy bits are what's smearing so badly, even though the nubbly texture they add is delightful. For a card being inserted and pulled out of an envelope, Gelatos prepared this way make a mess.

There is a possible fix, but it's fussy. I assume spraying a fixative or brushing gel medium on the piece might seal the Gelatos adequately (although biggish bits might still crumble in the pressure of postal handling). Adding that much liquid to a cardstock panel will bend and warp it, plus spraying fixative requires adequate ventilation. Last time I did it outside, a bug got stuck on my project. Eww.

This is just to fix the Gelatos sponged or spattered on cards. Consider the flaking whipped spackle of this butterfly card that rendered it unsendable. Or consider the gloss medium on this card. Janet mentioned a type of wax that can go over the gloss medium that keeps it from sticking.

Do you see where this is going?

MORE products. MORE drying time. MORE fuss.

This blog is titled Simplicity for a reason. The simplest use of the Gelatos is the best for my purposes...coloring the Gelato directly onto paper and rubbing it with my finger to blend it. Once it sets, it doesn't smear and looks amazing. That alone makes this whole experiment worthwhile to me!

I've had a blast playing around with the kit and am so grateful to Marco's for their give-away. But it's time for Simplicity to be simple again.

You're welcome!

It's definitely time to get to work on Christmas cards, and this little gem came to me in a flash. The rectangular background is cut from a large Hero Arts coffee cup stamp from Coffee Cup Tags. The tiny tag is from an old StampinUp punch. A little satin ribbon bow ties it all together.

While I don't always show the envelopes I stamp to coordinate with cards, I'm doing this more and more. It's such a simple touch that really makes the card delivery special.

The ink on this card, Archival red geranium, won't smear not even a little bit. What joy that brings to this clean-and-simple lover of white space!